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Subject: Own books that are incompatible with the fritz gui

Author: Norm Pollock

Date: 06:18:41 03/05/06


I use the fritz 9 gui. Some of the engines use their own ctg book - Fritz,
Hiarcs, Junior and now Rybka. Most engines (Winboard/UCI) do not have their own
ctg book. So I either use the engines's non-ctg "own" book if available or I use
my own home-cooked ctg book. Although my ctg book is pretty good (based on long
time control games of players with elo 2400+ from 2002-present), I prefer that
engines use their non-ctg "own" book wherever possible.

I set up an "empty.ctg" to enable engines to use their own non-ctg opening book.
I choose "empty.ctg" when I select that engine. And I make sure that engine
parameters are set to use book. In particular I set OwnBook=true in wb2uci.eng
for winboard engines.

Here is the problem. Some of the "own books" of winboard/uci engines report a
score of 0.00/1 when they make a move. This is bad because if they are playing
each other, and the gui has draw detection on, you will get some very short
games of 3-6 moves that end in a draw. Examples of such engines are Zappa 1.1,
Pepito, and Aristarch.

OTOH, most winboard/uci engines that use their own book in the fritz gui, report
a score of 0.01/1 or -0.01/1 when they make a move. This is good because the
draw detector will not declare a premature draw. And these books are fully
compatible with the gui and do not lead to short draws because the draw detector
is only looking at "0.00" scores.

Btw, ctg books do not report any score when they make a move.


Therefore with engines such as Zappa 1.1, Pepito and Aristarch, I prefer to use
my own cooked ctg book instead of the own book that comes with those engines.



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